1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an augmented reality routing system. In particular, it relates to a routing system for guiding a shopper in a shopping store.
2. Background of the Invention
The ongoing development and growing availability of portable devices providing increasing levels of computing ability, increasing memory capacity, increasingly sophisticated input, output and human interfaces and high levels of connectivity provide the capability for new and powerful user applications. Examples include smartphones, portable media players, personal digital assistants, palmtop computers, mini notebook computers, satellite navigation devices and the like. Such devices are typically implemented as computer platforms having one or more processors, volatile and/or non-volatile storage, intuitive user interfaces and network capability such as wireless networking. Devices are also increasingly provided with audio and video input and output facilities and location determination technology such as a global positioning system.
The availability of such increasingly generalized devices has seen a rapid growth of new and useful applications drawing on their portable nature, their ability to interact with the real world via cameras, microphones, speakers and wired and wireless networks, and their generalized nature allowing the execution of new software. One such emerging application is in the field of augmented reality in which a current live view of a user of a device as received via a camera is presented on a display of the device augmented by computer generated text or images. One application of augmented reality is advertising whereby advertisements can be overlaid on a live view captured by camera to indicate the availability of products of services in vicinity. Another application of augmented reality devices is in support of complex processes such as engineering maintenance tasks or even medical procedures. Here, augmented reality technology can present guidance and instructions graphically overlaid on a live video image of work in progress.
A further application of augmented reality is in the provision of navigational guidance, such as part of a satellite navigation system. Augmented reality is particularly beneficial in the provision of navigation guidance due to the convergence of a live view of a user overlaid directly with relevant navigation guidance. Thus, a user is able to relate the guidance directly to what can be seen and the potential for ambiguity in the guidance is greatly reduced. The use of augmented reality for navigation guidance is particularly useful for route planning in situations where viewing a screen of a device is not unduly distracting, such as for routes intended to be followed in a pedestrian manner or similar.
The application of augmented reality technology to such route planning applications has been adopted in shopping store settings. The paper “Personalized In-store E-Commerce with the PromoPad: an Augmented Reality Shopping Assistant” (Zhu et al., Electronic Journal for E-commerce Tools and Applications, 2004) describes the use of an augmented reality device to provide assistance to shoppers in a shopping store. The PromoPad device allows shoppers to optimize their shopping route in a store to quickly find items they plan to buy. The items may be known in advance, or categories of item (such as clearance items) may be located using the PromoPad. The PromoPad is also used to “augment” and “diminish” product information for products based on shopper profile information.
The route guidance offered by a product such as PromoPad is static in the sense that the user is provided guidance to reach a predetermined destination and a shortest or quickest route is taken. Further, the opportunities to augment and diminish product information for a shopper are identified based on shopper profile information. Such facilities cannot be afforded to shoppers for which no such profile information exists or where such information is not rich enough to discern an appropriate level or nature of augmentation.